Scientists may have finally solved the puzzle of what makes a person gay, and how it is passed from parents to their children.

A group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuals get that trait from their opposite-sex parents: A lesbian will almost always get the trait from her father, while a gay man will get the trait from his mother.

Long thought to have some sort of hereditary link, a group of scientists suggested Tuesday that homosexuality is linked to epi-marks — extra layers of information that control how certain genes are expressed. These epi-marks are usually, but not always, “erased” between generations. In homosexuals, these epi-marks aren’t erased — they’re passed from father-to-daughter or mother-to-son, explains William Rice, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Santa Barbara and lead author of the study.

That's ridiculous. Pretty much everyone before Judaism and Christianity would have gay sex (in the ancient classical world for example) and heterosexual sex - i.e. they were mostly bi-sexual.

Because Asian cultures, Native American cultures and the Aboriginal Australians are just like the Greeks? Go look and see if it was ever easy to be a gay Mongol for instance.

You have so many axes to grind that you frequently drop them on your feet. The fact is that there are very, very few truly 50/50 bisexuals out there - particularly amongst men.

I certainly didn't choose to be straight. There was no free will involved. One day girls went from icky to fascinating. It was quite clearly pre-programmed in me. It seems utterly obvious that it could have gotten programmed another way. This is also supported by the fact that all of my gay friends just knew they were gay from puberty.

Now it is also supported by actual genetic markers - which most scientifically minded folks had assumed had to be there for some time.

It is also obvious to me that given my pre-programming, it would be the most awful thing in the world for me to have to change it. I would really hate to be told I was awful for liking women. Because of this, I am very sympathetic to any gay person who is told by someone that they need to be other than who they are.

And just on another note about your axes... Under actual biblical law, homosexuality that is a natural compulsion would fall under a wholly other category than homosexuality that was just a choice... i.e. all the awful stuff you would gleefully drag out in poor translation without the benefit of the oral law would not apply as you would gleefully hope it would.

I don't really care if it's a choice or a hereditary trait. It shouldn't make any difference either way.

Seconded. "We're born that way" is a weak and treacherous argument for gay rights. It invites stupid questions, such as "What if Mr. X _chooses_ to be a sinner?", and is non-responsive to someone who contends that gay sex is inherently criminal/immoral. If someone's behavior is criminal, the question of why this person behaves in a criminal manner is completely irrelevant. The criminal behavior simply has to stop.

"The sexual activity of consenting adults is nobody else's business" is a much cleaner basis for arguing for gay rights.

I think the study is B.S. Being homosexual or Lesbian ,is nothing more than a matter of sexual preference . Just as with Sadists and masochists .Theres nothing wrong with that, amongst consenting adults .There is no phsyiological difference between gays and straights .When it comes to sexual behavior , outside of any overt influence exerted by the parents , it's whatever melts your grits , among consenting adults . Sticking it in everyones face is where the trouble comes in . The Government has no buisness in your bedroom ,. and your bedroom behavior no buisness on the streets .

I kind of see all the religious kooks all agreed with you but homosexuality was well practiced all over the world without much comment.

We also see for example bonobo monkeys, hetero and homosexual sex is used as a form of greeting or stress relief or cultural interaction so one of our closest relatives has no such gay or lesbian distinctions.

We just know more about sexual relations by the Greeks because they (and the Romans) wrote these things down more so than other cultures. Men and women who would engage in gay sex would also marry and so nothing wrong with this. Sappho was married for example and the females that were her lovers would marry off.

Mongols had no written records of such things.

So to claim homosexuality is in the genes is silly. Sexual stimulation feels the same be it male or female doing the stimulating and romantic love is not gene induced.

Before Judaism is a very small time period of recorded history. I don't think that's what you mean.

Before the Abrahamic religions became codified.

I do recall that there was homosexual practices in temples (sex as religion or holy prostitution) as part of the religion of the region before the Abrahamic religion started to take hold.

My favorite story from the Bible is the story where the "High Priest Hilkiah" discovered the long lost "Bible" that no one ever heard of before hidden/forgotten in the temple and told the king (Josiah) this and then he went about destroying the old religion in favor of the new monotheistic religion that he and no one else ever heard of before but was now the law of the land.

It is my belief that since homosexual sexual acts were part of the old religion that was being stamped out, the new religion that came to be (Judaism) was against it (just like aspects of kosher having to do with milk and meat came about as an avoidence of a pagan ceremony of boiling a young goat in its mother's milk and thus to be avoided as a pagan practice).

Native American societies believed Homosexuals were special and possessed both male and female energy (double spirit). Parents who had a gay child were considered lucky. Women were also considered sexually equal to men. Yet in these society's where homosexuality and male and female sexuality were equal and completely acceptable most heterosexual people did not engage in homosexual sex. Or is the history of an entire world on earth not relevant to you?

Native American societies believed Homosexuals were special and possessed both male and female energy (double spirit). Parents who had a gay child were considered lucky. Women were also considered sexually equal to men. Yet in these society's where homosexuality and male and female sexuality were equal and completely acceptable most heterosexual people did not engage in homosexual sex. Or is the history of an entire world on earth not relevant to you?

History requires written records. The Native Americans did not have written records and I will concede there are men and women who seem transgendered at birth and probably had those roles in some tribal societies but sex acts have always happened between same sex people not linked to any genetic predisposition.

For example:

In what is often called the world's first novel, the Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji), which dates back to around the eighth century AD, eroticism is treated as a central part of the aesthetic life of the nobility. The sexual interactions of Prince Genji are described in great detail, in an objective tone of voice, and in a way that indicates that sexuality was as much a valued component of cultured life as music or any of the arts. While most of his erotic interactions involve women, there is one telling episode in which Genji travels a fairly long distance to visit one of the women with whom he occasionally consorts but finds her away from home. It being late, and intercourse already being on the menu of the day, Genji takes pleasure in the availability of the lady's younger brother who, he reports, is equally satisfactory as an erotic partner.

That episode is how I envision life was like till the rise of the behavior inhibiting religions. It seems unnatural to me raised as a heterosexual but as I read more examples of ancient tales of such conduct it seems "gay" sex was world wide, accepted and more or less unremarkable (with evidence only in such tales that survive).

True, most written and binary records were destroyed yet you said pretty much anyone before Christianity were homosexual or bisexual. The Native Americans did not have Christianity and there were no social restrictions on its practice yet it was not practiced as widely as you are claiming it should have been.

True, most written and binary records were destroyed yet you said pretty much anyone before Christianity were homosexual or bisexual. The Native Americans did not have Christianity and there were no social restrictions on its practice yet it was not practiced as widely as you are claiming it should have been.

How can we know? I think most of our ancestors engaged in sex the way "Tale of Genji".

In other words, I find sexual exclusiveness to not have been the human practice in a lot or places around the world. If it is genetic, we all have that gene.

This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.

Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.

Westboro Baptist Church's attempts to protest at Leonard Nimoy funeral thwarted by inability to find it Unaffiliated Christian group failed to find church where service to commemorate the life of Star Trek star was being held. The Westboro Baptist Church ...

Buried somewhere deep inside the code of some Web browsers and websites is an old, weak version of encryption that can easily be cracked. And the only reason it exists is because of bad U.S. policies that have since ...

Justice Department Spokesman Marc Raimondi released the following statement Tuesday: "Three documents - a criminal Information, a plea agreement, and a statement of facts - were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of ...

Morgan Whitaker exposes where wingnuts are getting their "information" on "the evil, un-American, Kenyan, Marxist Muslim" Obama. This story is about a year old, but its still relevant today. David Jackson, of Belmont, NC, does not like President Obama. He ...

What, precisely, is this woman's major malfunction? For going on 30 years, she has been the target of every strange conspiracy theory that the half-bright mind of man can dream up. She knows they're out there, pining to have ...

Jeb Bush has been adamant that he will not switch his positions on two issues, immigration and Common Core standards, that will generate conservative opposition in the Republican primaries. But he just made a major concession to conservatives on ...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Samsung over what it says is the recording of private conversations in homes through the company's television sets. The privacy rights group filed a complaint with ...

From the National Center for Science Education House File 272, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on February 17, 2015, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, prevent Iowa from adopting the Next Generation ...

Kevin talks about a pervasive industry problem - being compliant according to your auditor and their checklist, but still being highly vulnerable. One of the common faults in compliance is senior level managers who don't really know enough end up ...

Curt Schilling showed a young punk you don't mess with his daughter on twitter. Schilling's fond paternal congratulations were met with "tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely ...

In this era of raw nerves, protests and increased tensions, Americans really want leadership. It's natural for the public and the media to desperately seek out examples that appear to affirm that our nation is changing for the better. ...

By this process, you can arrive at a conclusion like this: To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it. At CPAC, conservatives dedicated an entire panel to "The Future of Marriage." One could be ...

Earlier today interested Redditors posed questions to Poitras and Greenwald in Los Angeles, while Snowden posted from Moscow. A rare opportunity for average people to directly communicate with the (in)famous leaker.See the entire discussion HERE Redditor masondog13 asks: What's the ...

Wait a minute... watching Fox News and the Republican talking heads I learned that all Muslims are bad bad bad and in no way can Islam be interpreted as any sort of peaceful religion. news.yahoo.com OSLO (Reuters) - More than ...

For the last three years it's been my privilege to help coach a dedicated group of young women who have founded the first Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby league in Israel. They've learned, trained, fought, and worked unbelievably hard to bring ...

Added bold is all mine. this was an awkward way to go about gun control anyway. It clearly impacts the law abiding far more than felons, and is by that definition inefficient and intrusive at best. Gonna have to do ...

Frank says:

THE VERY BIG STUPID is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D Department. -- from The Real Frank Zappa book.